Beneventan neumes
Gradual, with Tropes, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [Southern Italy, mid-12th century]
A leaf from a Beneventan Gradual with neumes arranged around a single horizontal red line: the origins of the musical staff.

One leaf cut in two pieces, c.310 x 216mm, 11 lines written in Beneventan minuscule in brown ink, neumes arranged around a single red line, written in a darker ink, large initial 'T' of interlacing design filled with red-brown and yellow wash, smaller initials and rubrics (recovered from a binding and consequently cropped and somewhat worn). Bound in grey buckram at the Quaritch bindery.

Provenance:
(1) Otto Ege (1888-1951). From his collection sold at Sotheby's, 26 November 1985, lot 41.

(2) Bernard Quaritch Ltd., Bookhands of the Middle Ages IV: Beneventan Script, cat.1128 (1990), no 14. Acquired in May 1988.

(3) Schøyen Collection, MS 72.

Text:
The text contains the Mass for the Dedication of a Church.

Script and music:
The script has an uncalligraphic appearance, and the initial 'T' is crudely rendered. The constant intrusion of the Carolingian minuscule 'a' (for example line 1, 'aula tonantis'; line 2, 'fundata'; line 8 'vocabitur' etc.) indicates that the parent manuscript was copied in a centre on the periphery zone. A decisive advance in the development of notation was made when the scribe drew a horizontal red line to represent the pitch F, and grouped the neumes about the line. In time a second line, usually yellow, was drawn for C. This invention of the staff made it possible to note precisely the relative pitch of the notes of a melody, and freed music from its hitherto exclusive dependence on oral tradition. It was one of the most important events in the history of music. See D.J. Grout, A History of Western Music, 1962, pp.55-56.

V. Brown, ‘A Second New List of Beneventan Manuscripts (II)’, Mediaeval Studies, 50 (1988), p.615.
Répertoire des catalogues de manuscrits en ecriture latine anterieurs a 1600, List no 10, 1990, p.8, no 42.
BMB. Bibliografia dei manuscritti in scrittura beneventana, 1994.